Shamseddin Tomal cries because one of his co-workers was crushed to death after a wall collapsed.
Tomal was working on that construction, along with two contractors, inside a house that collapsed and fell on his colleagues.
Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Labor Justice Project, said: “Right now the worker is traumatized by seeing two of his colleagues, one dying and the other being unconscious.”
The incident occurred around 1:30 in the afternoon in the courtyard of this house on 42nd Street in Sunset Park.
Shamseddin was lucky that he had gone out to buy food when the wall came down.
The police declared a worker dead at the scene and another was taken to a hospital in the area with minor injuries.
The Labor Justice Project, a community organization that watches over the rights of contractors, provided support to the workers, and its director said: “It is really a tragedy that this happens after Christmas where three workers from Bangladesh were working.”
Workers were digging to fix the wall, which divided two houses. Neighbors say this 9-foot-high wall had long had irregularities, like a hole underneath it.
A neighbor commented: “Two and a half feet and 20 long. Two feet down and from side to side 20. It lasted more than two months without finishing and it has rained and all that land collapsed.”
Friends of the deceased worker assure that he was a good and dedicated person.
In the same way, this news affected neighbors, because several of them are engaged in construction: “Surely yes. If there is love in the heart one feels sad. A life was lost like that for the moment, one feels sorry and sadness”.
According to personnel from the city’s Department of Buildings, this house was inspected in 2014, precisely because of complaints regarding the fence. However, they found no evidence of collapse.
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